


I loved a maid as red as autumn

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Don’t copy to another site, Drabble, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, Nostalgia, Post-War for the Dawn, Singing, Theon Greyjoy Lives, the pack survives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 06:57:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20271826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Sansa finds herself distracted at the feast celebrating the defeat of the Army of the Dead. She excuses herself early to check on a wounded Theon, who's been recovering in Winterfell after just narrowly escaping death.





	I loved a maid as red as autumn

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Tumblr user @amortentiaforenemies who requested this drabble! I hope I did it justice!

The celebratory feast didn’t feel like much of a celebration at all.

Sansa hadn’t strayed far from the high table, entertaining Bran in conversation for most of the night while Jon made moon eyes at his Dragon Queen. Personally, she wasn’t in the mood for a feast, least of all while the fate of the country still hung on a thread, but it would be good for morale. Everyone had lost someone in the war, and they deserved this comfort at the very least.

There were other places she would like to be than keeping up appearances with their allies in the Great Hall. The last thing she wanted was for Theon to die alone while she gorged herself on wine and food that she wasn’t particularly hungry for; she wanted to sit by his bedside and hold his hand through the worst of his pain. He would do it for her if their roles were reversed.

The moment his nearly lifeless corpse was carted over to her from the godswood, she was resigned to seeing the last person who understood her, the last person who _knew_, buried in the crypts with the rest of her ghosts. And then he drew in the shallowest of breaths, blood spurting out of his mouth horrifically as he jerked in place, the end of a spear sticking out of his chest.

_Get a maester_, she had screamed with a voice that hardly sounded like her own and grasped at his face —his cold, blue-tinted face— with fumbling hands, panic and hope washing together as his eyes fluttered rapidly under her touch. More blood gushed from his mouth as his distant eyes focused in on Sansa, who was just inches from him, now kneeling on the crushed snow and dirt beneath her. _Let him live, let him live_, she prayed to whatever gods would listen to her now.

The Old Gods had never taken pity on her before, nor had the Seven, but she hoped they wouldn’t take him away from her so soon after allowing him a chance at life. It would be a cruel jape if he died now, one she would never forgive them for.

If not for the expectations that came with being who she was, she would not have hesitated to shirk the feast altogether in favor of sitting with Theon in what could be his last moments alive. It had been days since he had been confined to his rooms, bandaged up and given milk of the poppy to tide him over, but Maester Wolkan couldn’t give her any guarantees about his fate.

After all the horrors Theon had endured, he deserved to die old and wrinkled on the seaside somewhere, not in a dreary room in Winterfell at just twenty and four years old.

He deserved to live.

Tapping her foot impatiently against the leg of the table, Sansa tried to ignore the pointed looks Jon was giving Daenerys, tried to ignore Gendry slipping out of the hall in search of her sister, and tried to ignore everything that reminded her of a place she would rather be than here.

“You want to leave,” Bran stated in that unnerving tone of voice that he always spoke in nowadays. He didn’t smile nor did he turn to look at her. “No one will mind if you do.”

_But it’s my duty_, was on the tip of her tongue before she reevaluated her circumstances.

Even Tyrion was laughing it up with his brother, Brienne, and Podrick. Daenerys was sipping from her chalice, smiling into her wine as Missandei described something to her animatedly. The others she recognized from the war efforts were scattered around the room, raucous now that they were deep in their cups. It seemed that her absence would go mostly unnoticed.

“Will you be alright?” Sansa turned to her brother, or whatever was left of him now that he had been inhabited by some mystical ancient oracle that she couldn’t begin to comprehend.

“I always am,” Bran’s lips quirked as if he was in on some secret that she would never be able to understand. Sansa’s heart ached, wanting to catch just a glimpse of the brother she once knew, but she supposed the war had changed them all irreparably in some way or another.

Scooting her chair back, Sansa stood and ignored her urge to curtsey. No one was watching, and courtly manners would hardly do her any favors anymore. Brushing a hand against Bran’s shoulders, she smiled weakly at him before exiting through the closest door to her right.

As foretold, no one cared that she excused herself early from the festivities.

A burden seemed to be lifted from her shoulders as she made her way down the hall, taking the passage that would get her to Theon’s wing the quickest. She had visited him many a time since he had been put on bed rest, but his recovery had been arduous.

She rapped at the door gently, hoping not to wake him if he found some peace in sleep.

“Come in,” his voice rasped from inside, not sounding nearly as broken as it had the day before.

So long as he recuperated at all, she would gladly spend moons on end at his side.

She pushed the door open slowly to find that he had already propped himself up in his bed, eyes wide as he scanned the entrance of the room to see who had visited him at this hour, as if he didn’t already know. Other than the maesters and nurses she had assigned to watch him, only she visited him consistently. Jon had come once, and Bran as well, but they hadn’t stayed long. Arya had kept to herself since the battle, so Sansa wasn’t about to press her to keep her company yet.

His smile was blinding when he caught sight of her, so wide that Sansa was sure it must have hurt. She had never seen Theon smile like that before, even in his youth when all he seemed to do was smirk and skulk around these very halls. How very different things had become.

“Sansa,” he straightened a bit, though he strained to do so. “You came.”

“I come every day,” Sansa chuckled as she strode over to him, taking the seat closest to the bed and reaching immediately for his ungloved hands, mangled and flayed, but still _his_. He gave them to her without protest, his expression soft when she looked back from their joined hands to his eyes. “I don’t know why you’re always so surprised.”

Theon lowered his eyes and shrugged bashfully as if he was embarrassed to be so excited by her visits. He glanced at the empty bowl of salve on the table propped in front of the bed, several vials of medicine atop it. “There’s not much to do here other than think about you.”

The words seemed to slither into her chest and coil around her heart, squeezing it with a vigor that she knew Theon must not have intended when he said things like that to her.

Her influx of… feelings seemed to come and go, but Sansa was content to allow them to fester in her heart so long as it gave her something to hope for, to dream about, while he healed.

She wasn’t sure when they had started, only that their last night together before the fighting had cast a new light upon him. He was brave in declaring that he would protect Bran for all to hear, and gentle in the way he had returned her embrace upon being reunited, and strong in how he fought to live through every horror he had endured from Ramsay Bolton to the Night King.

_Brave and gentle and strong_, Sansa smiled down at him softly, _just like Father said_.

“Believe it or not,” she started with a coy smile, squeezing his cold hands softly with her own as she analyzed his expression for even a trace of pain. Getting him to accept any sort of preferential treatment in the first place had been a hassle until she insisted on it for her peace of mind. “Worrying about you is all I seem to do when I’m not here.”

That managed to coax another smile from Theon, this one gentler than the last. “I believe it.”

“I sent a raven to your sister this morning,” she started softly, not wanting to say anything that would alarm him. Theon merely nodded, as pensive and in-thought as he always was. “I informed her of your condition and invited her to Winterfell, should she want to check on you.”

He smiled to himself. “I don’t suppose I’m in a state to take up arms yet, am I?”

“No,” Sansa murmured, more relieved than she should have been to acknowledge that he wouldn’t be able to accompany her armies south to fight for Daenerys whenever the time came for her campaign. It wouldn’t take long, knowing how the woman’s ambitions seemed to be amplified by Cersei Lannister’s duplicity. “I’m afraid you’ll have to stay here.”

She wouldn’t lose Theon to the south, not when there was a decent chance that she would lose Jon to it as it was, just as she had lost Father and Robb. The south did nothing but take from her.

_No one can protect anyone_, she had once said, and perhaps she couldn’t protect Jon from the mistake that he was making in following Daenerys to war. Bran would be safe here, at the very least, and she doubted that Daenerys would forcibly conscript Arya after the show she had put on in the Great Hall of toasting to her. Nobody could argue to send Theon back into battle, not with blood staining his multitude of bandages and the deep cuts pierced into his skin.

“There are worse fates,” Theon mumbled, weakly running his thumb along Sansa’s knuckles.

A lump lodged itself into the back of her throat when he spoke the words, recalling just how her heart had frozen over when she thought he was dead. Even now, though the bags under his eyes hadn’t lessened with the rest he had taken, there was a warm flush to his face that hadn’t been there just days prior. The sound of cheering and celebration followed them from elsewhere in the castle, but she found it hard to focus on anything but his ragged breathing.

“I thought I lost you,” she whispered, so low that for a moment, she thought he hadn’t heard her.

“You didn’t,” he breathed back out, looking at her with a devotion she couldn’t even start to dissect. “I’m still here. I can’t eat anything but gruel and soggy bread, but I’m here.”

She almost choked with laughter. He was making _jokes_. Bad ones, but they were still jokes all the same. Sansa didn’t think she had heard him make one since before they had even set off to Winterfell, always snickering with Robb over things that weren’t fit for a lady’s ears.

_Stay here_, she wanted to plead with him as his eyes slid shut, willing that even once he was healed, he would choose to remain in Winterfell rather than go anywhere else. It was a selfish thought, to want to keep him close by, but she couldn't help it. _Stay with me_.

“Sing me a song?” He asked quietly, his voice laced with vulnerability.

“What?” She responded, sure that she had misheard the request.

“I remember you… you always used to sing for us after your lessons. Your voice was so pretty. Like birdsong.” He peeked up at her hesitantly, each hitch in his voice causing his words to come out rather awkward. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just… I was thinking about it. The songs you sang. I haven’t heard a song in years.”

“What do you want to hear?” Sansa asked after a moment.

Singing didn’t bring her much joy anymore, but she would do it if it brought him some comfort.

Theon squeezed her hands with his softly, as if to thank her, and swallowed. “I don’t know any songs. There was… there was the one about the maid with autumn hair. I liked that one.”

Sansa knew which one he was speaking about. She recalled Lancel Lannister singing it once under his breath as if he couldn’t get enough of the song, and Joffrey getting a singer to serenade Margaery Tyrell with it at court a number of times, repeating the ‘spry as springtime’ verse until it was tired. And then Marillion had sung it to Aunt Lysa, back in the Vale, almost a lifetime ago.

It was a beautiful one, one that had been poisoned for her by one singer after another, by the south itself. Mayhaps it would help to replace the terrible memories with one good one here.

When she glanced back at Theon, he was simply smiling at her.

“I loved a maid as red as autumn,” Sansa started softly, her voice cracking with disuse though it didn’t seem that Theon minded much. She continued, a little more confident now that she remembered how the song went. It had to have been years since she tried her hand at singing. “With sunset in her hair. Her honeyed lips and tender heart left me nothing but despair.”

“That’s the one,” he breathed out, gently tugging on their joined hands. “I loved that song once.”

For a moment, she thought to release her hold on him before realizing that he meant to take her with him. Helping him somewhat, Sansa scooted closer to him in her chair to see what it was that he intended to do with the hands he was holding captive.

She thought to make a jape of it, to say something that would make him smile, but found her breath catching in her throat when he raised her hands to his mouth and pressed the softest of kisses to them. It was silly to be so swept away by a simple gesture such as that, but the way he did it, so sweet and gentle, dazzled her beyond what she had expected from him.

“Thank you, Lady Sansa,” he mumbled as he released his grip on her. “It was beautiful.”

“You haven’t even heard the rest of the song yet,” she informed him fondly, reaching for his hands again in her insistence to maintain contact with him, as if letting him go for even a second would risk losing him forever. “How do you know it’s beautiful?”

He chuckled to himself, a nervous sound though it maintained a warmth to it.

Theon didn’t take his eyes off her, even when she matched his gaze with an inquisitive one. “I just do.”

The celebration was all but forgotten when he smiled up at her, weak and worse for wear, but _alive_.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on tumblr at targaryenstyrell if that's your jam!


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